Plum rain is also called yellow plum rain, and some people also call it moldy rain. Because when it rains, the plums are ripe. And because it rains continuously, as little as a few days, more than half a month, the air humidity is large, and things are prone to mold.
The name of plum rain is related to plums. Plum is not a plum blossom, it is a fruit, also known as green plum and yellow plum. Cao Cao in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms has two stories, one is to hope for plums to quench thirst, and the other is to cook wine with green plums.
The Northern Song Dynasty poet He Zhu has a poem "Qingyu Case" that is very famous, if you ask how much leisure? A river of tobacco, full of wind in the city, plums yellow when the rain. He uses the continuous plum rain here to describe people's loneliness and sentimentality, which is really appropriate.
It can also be seen from this poem that the plum rainy season should refer to when the plums are ripe, probably in June and July. But when we read ancient poems, we find that the time of plum rain is different, and there are all in April, May and June.
"The North Bank of the Jiujiang River Encounters Wind and Rain" Bai Juyi
Huangmei County side yellow plum rain, white head wave in the bald head
There is no shore in the wide part of the Jiujiang River, and there are many bad winds at the end of May
The steady road on earth should be infinite, and what is left in it
This poem should have been written by Bai Juyi when he belittled Sima of Jiangzhou, which is Jiujiang, adjacent to Huangmei County. The poet traveled in the wind and rain, and this yellow plum rain occurred at the end of May, which is equivalent to the beginning of June.
Why not just write about June? Probably out of the need for poetry to fight. Although this is not a grammatical poem, the poet also strives to be neat and tidy. Huangmei County to Huangmei Rain, Baitou Wave to Baitou Weng, Jiujiang Wide to May at the end of the month, this is intentional.
"Plum Rain for Days" Fang Hui
Outside the village of Qian, in the middle of May.
If there is no plum rain, the rice flower wind will be obtained.
Deep storage Pi Tang full, acquainted with The Tong.
He also knew that Zhou Yuji dared to sigh that Ruan Tu was poor.
Unlike Bai Juyi's poem above, the Song Dynasty poet Fang Hui wrote this poem in Meiyu, but it happened in May. In the continuous plum rain, the fields are scattered with thousands of villages, which look like a landscape painting. Villagers wear bucket hats and are busy in the rain, planting rice.
The poem writes that if there is no plum rain soaked in the front, there will be no ripening of rice in the back. As for whether the May plum is ripe, whether it is a green plum or a yellow plum, the poem does not say. But what is certain is that it must be in the growing season of the plums.
"Huang Mei" Du Fu
Nanjing Xipu Road, ripe yellow plum in April.
Zhanzhan Yangtze River go, the rain comes.
The Moutz is easy to get wet, and the clouds are dense and difficult to open.
The day is full of dragon joy, coiled and shore back.
Huang Meiyu, written by Du Fu, is much earlier than the first two poems, and it is already April. And the location is well-founded, that is, Xipu Town in Chengdu, Nanjing. The yellow plums are ripe in April, how did the climate of the Tang Dynasty come so early?
But the poem is indeed the real situation of meiyu written. You see that the Yangtze River is filled with water, and the river is rushing east. The sky is foggy and misty, and it will not disperse for many days. The air humidity is large, and the humidity of each family does not recede, just like the current return to the south.
From the above three poems, it can be seen that the ancient people's understanding of the plum rain season was not fixed, and the four months of four, five, six, and seven, as long as it was continuous underground heavy rain, would be regarded as plum rain. Even if the plums are not ripe at this time, they are still growing, and it is not too much to call plum rain.
Because of the limitations of conditions in ancient times, the definition of this rainy season is not very accurate. And because of the ripening of this plum and the arrival of the rainy season, it changes with the temperature and climate, and each year will be slightly different, and there is a certain time difference.
More importantly, poetry is a kind of literary creation, focusing on expressing the author's life experience and mood feelings, and it sometimes does not strictly follow the objective reality of nature. They write about the plum rains of different months, sometimes just to express the need.
Generally speaking, whether it is the Tang Dynasty or the Song Dynasty, the plum ripening and yellow plum seasons should be similar to today, all in June and July. So we appreciate the poetry of the ancients, and do not care too much about whether Huang Meiyu happened in April, May or June, if it is not a professional study.
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